We all have our moments of imagining ourselves INDEPENDENT
characters. We take pride in our independence and are never as
foolish as when trying to prove how independent we are.

Every man, to begin with, is born absolutely at the mercy of his
ancestry. You have not a thing in you, and you never will have a
thing in you, that you did not inherit from some one of the
thousands and thousands of ancestors, all of whom are dimly
stored away in your complex make-up.

You may develop marvellously the faculties which they gave you.

But you ARE DEPENDENT on those who brought you into the world,
and upon those back of them.

The Kaffir, sober, industrious, honest, with all the virtues
rolled up within him, has not a fragment of one chance in ten
thousand billions of equalling the achievements of a tenth-rate
white man whose ancestral start was better. ----

After birth you start with dependence on your ancestors, and
after youth you are dependent on your education.

Facts are your tools, and you can't work without them.

If your mind has the right formation, if your brain is provided
with the deep convolutions, and good luck has supplied you with a
good education in youth, the whole thing is dependent on your
health--on your liver, your stomach, or some other part of your
internal machinery.